It did not seem to bode very serious intentions towards Mrs. Deane, and would scarcely have pleased her mother.
Or else, if something had crossed him, and Mrs. Deane had flirted outrageously with somebody else, and he had not been asked to sing (or somebody else had), he would assure me in good round English that I was the most infernal lout that ever disgraced a drawing-room, or ate a man out of house and home, and that he was sick and ashamed of me. "Why can't you sing, you d—d French milksop? The d—d roulade-monger of a father of yours could sing fast enough, if he could do nothing else, confound him! Why can't you talk French, you infernal British booby? Why can't you hand round the tea and muffins, confound you! Why, twice Mrs. Glyn dropped her pocket-handkerchief and had to pick it up herself! What, 'at the other end of the room,' were you? Well, you should have skipped across the room, and picked it up, and handed it to her with a pretty speech, like a gentleman! When I was your age I was always on the lookout for ladies' pocket-handkerchiefs to drop—or their fans! I never missed one!"
Then he would take me out to shoot with him (for it was quite essential that an English gentleman should be a sportsman)—a terrible ordeal to both of us.
A snipe that I did not want to kill in the least would sometimes rise and fly right and left like a flash of lightning, and I would miss it—always; and he would d—n me for a son of a confounded French Micawber, and miss the next himself, and get into a rage and thrash his dog, a pointer that I was very fond of. Once he thrashed her so cruelly that I saw scarlet, and nearly yielded to the impulse of emptying both my barrels in his broad back. If I had done so it would have passed for a mere mishap, after all, and saved many future complications.
* * * * *
One day he pointed out to me a small bird pecking in a field—an extremely pretty bird—I think it was a skylark—and whispered to me in his most sarcastic manner—
"Look here, you Peter without any salt, do you think, if you were to kneel down and rest your gun comfortably on this gate without making a noise, and take a careful aim, you could manage to shoot that bird sitting? I've heard of some Frenchmen who would be equal to that!"
I said I would try, and, resting my gun as he told me, I carefully aimed a couple of yards above the bird's head, and mentally ejaculating,
"'All to thee blythe sperrit!"
I fired both barrels (for fear of any after-mishap to Ibbetson), and the bird naturally flew away.